dunlin/musing.md

2.5 KiB

Braindump

This is a combination of a thinking-out-loud document and a TODO list. It is not a document of record. You should not expect to derive value from reading it

tl;dr what if ... a web browser, but tabs were more like emacs buffers?

objects/data types

buffer Buffer.find ;; by name, title, url Buffer.by_name (maybe?)

buffer has-a webview but it is not shown by default. Later we may add some kind of webview reuse so that invisible and old buffers don't need to have a webview until needed.

I seem to be using "buffer" and "tab" mostly synonymously

frame Frame.the-frame frame.set-buffer (buffer) frame.get-buffer => buffer frame.commander - text entry widget frame.actions - container of toolbar buttons

in future we may be able to split a frame into multiple windows which show different buffers

location (url) document document element(?) webview lua's standard types


a consideration we haven't touched on yet: in emacs, not all buffers are files - e.g. the buffer list, or the process list, or the magit status buffer - there is a well-used affordance for elisp to put semi-persistent interactable content onscreen - do we need such a thing here or is it ok to say "just call gtk" to command authors?


is there a role for TAB?

  • in the shell it activates completion or shows options: we don't need that if we're updating them automatically

  • we could use it to cycle through the available completions: switch focus from entry to step through the completions then RET activates


TODO

  • [done] show loading progress

  • [done] show url when the commander is inactive

  • [done] visit-location url defaults to current

  • [done] ESC to cancel interactive command

  • [done] C-g to cancel key sequence

  • [done] display unbound key error

  • [done] back binding

  • [done] save url history, use it in completions

  • [done] autocomplete command name

  • [done] keyboard navigation of completions

  • custom rendering for completions (e.g. buffer thumbnails)

  • less ugly default completions rendering

  • buffer name is often going to be useless. find buffers by url/title still need some 1:1 mapping between the buffer object and a text-representable form of same

  • bind event to echo-area click, ideally dependent on what's being shown in there

  • in general, can we bind commands to widget events?

  • command to create new buffer

  • suppress "Return is undefined" message after a command executes


can we increase the testability? e.g. for command processing, define a command, feed in some keystrokes,